Back Up question

I currently have my database backed up to the same physical drive where the data resides. In the event of drive failure, I would lose everything. Due to space considerations on a tape, I was wondering if I can copy only the database backup file (.BAK) and not the transaction log backup (.TRN). Can I go ahead with this approach if I do not want point-in-time recovery and I am satisfied with only what resides on .BAK file? Will I able to restore the database from the tape if the tape contains only the (.BAK) file ?

Thanks.Sure...

How often do you dump the transaction log?

But I don't think it's advisable...

How big a database are we talking about...

Ever consider compression?|||I often dump my backups across the network to a share on another server. It won't work with very large databases very well, but I've had pretty good luck so far. I find that writing backups to tape can be extremely slow.

As for not keeping the transaction logs, I have to agree with Brett; I would prefer to keep mine.

Regards,

hmscott|||Do you dump across a network, or locally the copy?

I've always thought a dump over a network could corrupt the dump

Never seen it...just always believed it could happen...|||I had all kinds of problems with it in 6.5 and 7.0. I've never seen any problems with it in 2000 though. We do it all the time. All of our servers are dumped to a central repository. We even do restores from there, including log shipping restores. I've never had any corruption doing it this way. Of course, we do have a dual 16gb core with fiber to all servers. We're upgrading to dual 64gb. A lot has changed over the years I guess.

I would definitely consider compression if I were that strapped on space and bandwidth. Many times SQL Backup files will shrink to 70-80 percent of the original size.